A Second Chance
by TheGreenFire
Summary: "The last thing I remember was pain as I felt my arm being ripped out of its socket, and the eyes of people I thought were dead." Cato thought he was dead, but when he wakes up in a hospital room somewhere underground his life takes a strange twist.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This story is set two months after the 74th Hunger Games finished/two months after Cato died. It's also In Cato's POV. Hope you enjoy!  
-TheGreenFire

* * *

My eyes open and a strange sight appears in front of me; a white crystal chandelier. Why am I seeing a chandelier? Aren't I dead? I turn my head and see a strange machine with pipes full of different coloured liquids coming out of it. I trace the pipes with my eyes and realise they're attached to my arm. I'm slightly tempted to rip them out, but if they're jabbed in me I guess they're there for a good purpose. I turn my gaze to my arm, which is extremely pale. I touch it and realise that the skin colours are different, and that my skin is cold and slightly rubbery. I retract my hand. _It must just be my imagination_, I think. _This whole thing must be my imagination._ I hear a noise to my other side and quickly look over, flinching at the sudden pain which stabs my shoulder. I ignore it the pain, and stare at what I see; a bed with a girl lying on it. She's staring at a piece of paper, and looks about 15. She's got long dark hair, a few freckles on her cheeks and eyes that send a shiver through my body. I ignore her eyes, and stare at the rest of her face. It's so familiar, and suddenly I remember her name.

"Clove?" I say. Her head turns away from the piece of paper and an expression of delight appears on her face.

"Cato!" she shrieks, tossing the paper on a table next to her bed. She smiles at me. "You're awake! Finally! I thought you wouldn't make it; Dr Z said that you probably wouldn't, but I told her that you would. And you did! Do you know how lonely it's been all by myself? It's been really lonely. All I've had to do is stare at that piece of paper" she points to the paper on the table "which is _so boring_ since that's all I've had for, like, the past two months!"

She sped through everything, and I hardly understood what she was saying, but a few things I caught. Like, _I thought you wouldn't make it_, _lonely_ and _two months._

"Two months?" I ask, confused. Clove nods her head.

"Mmhmm," she says. "You've been asleep for a very long time." I frown, even more confused. I'm supposed to be dead! Katniss shot my hand with an arrow, and the mutts devoured my body. I must've passed out pretty early on; because I can't remember what happened after a mutt with deep brown eyes started ripping the flesh off of my arm. Then I realised why Clove's eyes made me shiver. Those were _her_ eyes. Those eyes that I saw before biting my arm were hers. She was a mutt. Clove was a mutt who killed me. She was my ally who died and came back to kill me. I stare at her eyes, which are filled with happiness and seem too innocent. Those eyes can't have been the eyes that ripped me apart, that looked at me with such violence and anger and power. But they were. I cast my gaze elsewhere.

"Clove, where are we?" She looks down at her hands.

"I don't know," she says.

"Am I dead?" I ask, looking at her face again but trying not to look in her eyes.

"No," Clove says, getting up and sitting on the edge of my bed. "You're alive."

"How?" I ask. "The last thing I remember was pain as I felt my arm being ripped out of its socket, and the eyes of people I thought were dead. Those mutts destroyed me! They tore at my skin and made me a pile of bloody limbs. There's no way I survived that."

"But you did," Clove says reassuringly. "Dr Z saved you! She saved me, too. She's wonderful. Cato, she's giving us a second chance at life."

I stare at her. A second chance at life. . . It seems too good to be true. I start thinking about how great it would be to go home and see my family after thinking that either I would never see them again, or that I would see them after winning the Hunger Games, when Clove suddenly gasps and rushes out of the room, muttering about how she should've done this ages ago. I stare at the place where Clove was sitting and realised that Clove would never sit next to me, unless she was taking something from me without saying it beforehand. Clove would never shriek in delight when she saw I was awake, nor would she start saying people were wonderful. Seeing the nice in people isn't what Clove does. She sees the evil in people so she knows who's the enemy and who to eliminate first. That's why she knew who to kill first in the bloodbath. That's why she turned her back on the kid from 10 and ran towards Katniss so she could kill her. Maybe if she had, we would've won. The girl from 11 wouldn't have allied with her, and then Thresh wouldn't have killed in her when she started taunting Katniss about Rue.

Clove has changed. How, I'm not sure. But she isn't the Clove I know and . . . _maybe _love.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hi everyone!_  
_I firstly want to apologise for uploading this chapter so late. Everytime I went to write it I wrote a few sentences and couldn't think of anything. But, it's finished now!_  
_Also, I am going to upload a new chapter every Monday (or, at least, _try_ to)._  
_Please review. I would really like some feedback about my story; your favourite part, suggestions for the next chapter, stuff like that (:_  
_Anyway, I really hope you like the new chapter, I worked very hard on it!_  
_ -TheGreenFire_

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"Clove, I told you to tell me as soon as he woke up!" An unnaturally high voice snaps from somewhere behind me- probably in the next room.

"I know, I know," says Clove. "But I was just so excited that he was awake. He'd been asleep for so long that-"

"You don't need to remind me," says the first voice, as a door creaks open near me. "Just be quiet and read your paper!" A tall, slightly plump woman walks in. Her skin is very dark, and her eyelashes, which are long and green, remind me of the tall grass which I had to run through to kill Thresh.

"Ah, Cato, you're finally awake," the dark-skinned woman says. Her voice is soft and soothing, much different from the voice she used when she was talking to Clove. She walks over to the machine next to my bed and starts pushing buttons and writing stuff down on a clipboard. "How are you feeling? Tired? Dizzy? Ill?"

"Umm," I say. "I guess I feel fine." It's a lie. My entire body is aching. I try to sit up and give a small yelp of pain as I move my right leg. The woman raises an eyebrow.

"Really?" she says, placing the clipboard on a hook jutting out of the machine next to us. She then presses a button, and the bed I'm lying on moves slowly. It splits in half and slowly moves backwards, until I'm sitting upright. The woman grabs my arm. Her touch is surprisingly light.

"Now, I'm going to lift up your arm," she says, her voice still gentle. "And when you feel just the tinniest bit of pain, tell me." I nod, confused why she's doing this but I go along with it anyway. "By the way, my name is Dr Z."

She starts lifting my arm, slowly and cautiously. After a few seconds of my arm being elevated, I feel a ripple of pain starting at my shoulder, and I wince. Dr Z lets go of my arm and it flops back down to my side. She doesn't say anything; she just grabs the clipboard from the hook and starts writing. I stay silent, hoping that all will be explained soon. But she keeps writing for about another five minutes, and I can't hold in my curiosity any longer.

"Erm…" I start. Dr Z looks up.

"What is it, Cato?" she asks, her eyes dart up from the clipboard and quickly scan my face.

"Where are we?" I say. "What's going to happen?" Dr Z looks down at her clipboard again and sighs.

"I knew you would ask that," she mutters. She disappears behind the machine and appears with a large chair. "And I think it's about time Clove knew the answer, too." I hear shuffling, and Clove appears next to me. She sits on the edge of my bed, and again I get the feeling that this isn't really Clove, but I shove the feeling away.

"There is a reason that we took both of you out of the arena and brought you here," Dr Z starts. "And that is to give you a second chance. President Snow thought it was very unnecessary to let twenty-three of you die every year, and together we decided that we shall try and save our tributes from death in the arena. After decades of planning we built this facility and started transporting dying tributes here instead of the Capitol, like we previously did."

"But where are we?" blurts out Clove. "What is this place?" Dr Z gives a small smile.

"We are at the TRC," she says. "The Tribute Rehabilitation Centre. We are hundreds of metres underground. There are many floors, twenty in total. We have twelve floors designated to the 12 Districts; with 1 at the bottom and 12 at the top. There are also several floors assigned to training equipment and storage rooms, so the centre is very large. Our goal is to try and save as many tributes as possible, and send them back to their homes so they can experience life as they were meant to. Although, not all of our operations go well, and we cannot always save everyone. But we were very lucky with you two. Career tributes usually have such gruesome and violent fights which normally end their lives far before we can even try and help."

"I'm confused. . ." I say. "How can we be here? How can you save us? It's impossible!"

"No, it's not," says Dr Z with a small laugh. "Do you remember what we injected you with before you went into the arena?"

"The trackers?" I ask. Dr Z smiles.

"Well done, the trackers," she says. "Personally, I think it's my greatest invention. The trackers don't just find your location, they measure how long you have to live if you have ingested poison or have been fatally injured. When the person has a few minutes to live, the tracker shuts down the body and stops any blood from leaving it. The tracker also stimulates the heart, and forces it to beat, even if death is very close. Once the heart has been stimulated, we shoot the canon and collect the body. Most of the poison used the arena has been made by the Capitol, and instead of killing the person; it makes the person collapse and imitate death. Then we are able to collect the body with minimal damage done, and almost a one hundred per cent chance of survival. As I stated before, not all deaths can be overcome, and we do lose at least five tributes every year, not including those who won of course."

Dr Z falls silent, watching our expression and reactions probably. I'm so shocked by all this information, and I kind of wish I didn't ask about it now. I glance at Clove. She's staring at her hands, a confused look on her face. She looks so innocent, nothing like the Clove in the arena, who was alert and ready to kill someone at a moment's notice. She suddenly looks up at Dr Z.

"Dr Z," she says. "How long are we going to be here before going home?" Dr Z smiles, a kind hearted smile like before, when she was asking me how I was feeling.

"Until you are both ready," she says.


End file.
